Title

Author

Degree Name

MS (Master of Science)

Program

Mathematical Sciences

Date of Award

8-2002

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Edith Seier

Committee Members

T. Henry Jablonski Jr., Robert M. Price Jr.

Abstract

Youth Tobacco Surveys have been conducted in several states in the U.S. in recent years, in order to design policies with the goal of reducing tobacco use among young people. Some primary analysis of those surveys has been done, but few analyses include modeling, and the study of independence has been addressed, mainly, in the bivariate context.

In this work contemporary methods, which are of relative recent appearance in categorical data analysis, will be examined, including logistic and log-linear modeling as well as graphical displays and correspondence analysis. These methods will be applied to data from the 2000 Tennessee Youth Tobacco Survey.

The objective is to demonstrate that methods of multivariate categorical data analysis can provide fresh insight about the behavior of adolescents with respect to tobacco use. The ultimate purpose of this work is to recommend methodology that goes beyond that which is currently published.